Every day, small business owners are faced with difficult decisions… but most of them come down to a balance of cost and quality. Because of this simple truth, companies catering to small business are changing their strategies and accommodate by creating high quality options at low pricing.
This is especially true when it comes to website design and web programming.
In the old way of thinking, a simple website could cost a business owner anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000, with the quality defined in the price. Many a frugal small business has fallen into the trap of the $3,000 website, only to pay and additional $4,000+ to have it fixed: Poor graphic quality, unfriendly back-ends, lack of control over content, and so on.
The Next Generation of websites has cut costs by performing the detail-oriented tasks including design, writing, testing and project management in the US, while using inter-connected, overseas employees to perform the time-consuming programming work at a reduced hourly rate.
“We submit bids for jobs against companies who pay their programmers $125 per hour. Our guys don’t even cost half of that, and yet our quality is top notch,” says Alex Oleshko, owner of Optimum Systems Online. “I personally travel to the Ukraine often to meet with my employees, though I manage our team from my Connecticut office. I am in contact with all my US and international employees on a daily basis. Many managers in the US can’t say the same.”
Companies like Optimum Systems Online work to create a hybrid product of quality and low cost, fulfilling a small business need and challenging the web-firms with higher hourly costs. But they still have to compete against the low-end firms, offering even lower-cost products.
“Sometimes we talk to business owners and they are worried that we are just another Made-in-India website company, where they will have little input or control over their final product,” says Mr. Olesko, who has worked on websites for over a decade. “It takes a lot of convincing to assure customers that we aren’t just outsourcing their project to faceless freelancers over in Asia.”
With the trend going the way it is, soon the days of the $40,000 non-e commerce website will be over, and businesses of all sizes will be well represented online and in-person.
If you would like to talk to someone at OSO to see how we can deliver you a top quality website at a fraction of the price, call us directly at 203-493-6245.
